The challenge
by Mlle Snape
Summary: Minerva makes a bet with Severus. An enigma has to be solved.  But what does Hermione Granger have to do with it?  Noncompliant with DH, AU and OC. Rated T to make sure.Severus Snape, Minerva McGonigall, Hermione Granger.
1. Chapter 1

**The challenge**

HP and its world is not mine. Just having fun with it. This story is not DH compliant, it AU and OC. You have been warned.

With surprisingly long and supple fingers, his silken locks were placed delicately behind his ear. His attention, wrapped around the problem before him, hadn't wavered in the last two hours.

He swore with sudden irritation; Minerva and her wily Scottish ways, had produced an enigma that had to be solved! A friendly bet had been mentioned, well... as friendly as any gryffindor/slytherin bet could be; she had challenged him to put it back in the right order. It would seem that a very old bottle of Scottish whisky had been deemed the proper prize. And to the loser, you may be asking yourself, there would be a certain exhibition in the staff lounge. Wearing a pink corset and matching knickers, the loser would sing "A cauldron full of hot, strong love" to all at the next meeting. 

Slytherin pride, be damned... she would not better him!! He poked and prodded, analysed and weighed the silly thing. His senses were on full alert as he touched the coloured cube, expecting the worst curses to rip him apart, but only getting the sense that he was being made a fool.

He took it with him everywhere, hoping to find a spare moment to test it some more. But then, one day, as he sat in the Restriction Section of the library, still fiddling with the confounded object from hell, a student passed by his hidey-hole and gave him the briefest glance. With a roll of her eyes, she stopped in her tracts and paced back to where he sat, a regal glare upon his face.

'Pardon me, professor...' she said in her own dulcet tones, a hand outstretched, asking permission to handle the dratted thing. His nostrils flared in anger, miffed by such brash and gryffindorish expectancy for him to obey her command.

As he was about to remove a million points from the Lion's house, his lips suddenly shifted from angry sneer to an evil smirk. 'Let the know-it-all swot do it' he thought with much glee. The girl would most likely fail in her attempt to solve the problem, or so he thought self-righteously. If he couldn't do it, surely this young girl couldn't achieve it either.

So, with sprightly swiftness, he stood up and handed her the brightly coloured cube, smugly crossing his arms over his chest, sneering softly to her.

'Miss Granger, I doubt that even you could possibly resolve this puzzle' he breathed threateningly, 'your house will surely want to skin you alive, after you lose the five-hundred points I will be removing after your failure...' He knew that this was the best way of getting a rise out of her. With one brow gently arched as he spoke his words, his inner satisfaction glowed, but would soon be greatly abused at the hands of this slip of a girl.

Hermione felt quite undaunted, knowing that this was a relative 'piece of cake'. With the skill and alacrity of an old hand, she twisted and spun the segments, one way and another. Never hesitating or showing any sign of distress, within minutes, the patchwork of colours that had covered the cube's surfaces, had been rearranged as it should; even colours of red, blue, green, yellow, white and orange on each of the six sides.

Snape's eyes became slits as he tried to understand what had just happened before his eyes, but Granger simply handed back the cube with a smirk firmly placed on her face.

'There you go, professor Snape! Its as easy as that... even a gryffindor can do it! she added snidely, 'So, what do I get for doing the task? Since I can't remove points from slytherin... ' Her large brown eyes fluttered with mock innocence.

His face contorted with white-hot rage, her complete cheek would cost her more than she had expected. 'Yes...' he hissed, 'what could you possibly get for doing such a simple task?' His mind went whirling with the different punishments he could inflict upon the girl. Some were quite straight forward, like detention with Filch. But in his mind, this situation needed a bit more 'oomph'!

She looked on, reading his expressions as they travelled across his face, trying to decide how bad the detention would be. But, since the war had ended and she had returned to school to finish her seventh year, the terrible potions teacher had wielded little fear in her heart. The war had toughened her out, made her more driven and confident in her capabilities. Detention was a minor blip in her world now. Let him offer his worst, she could deal with anything now.

Snape suddenly decided upon his next move and swished his wand in a small arc, extinguishing all the lights around them. After a minute of silence, his voice reverberated near her ear, sending a waft of moist, warm air on the skin of her neck. She shivered as goose bumps followed his breath down to her shoulders. Why was he standing so close to her anyway? That knowledge made her just a tad nervous.

'Go' he whispered, 'you are about to break curfew if you stay here any longer.' She felt him pass behind her back, his teaching robes displacing the air around them. More shivers ran down her back as she started to walk away from him, wanting to put a bit more distance between herself and the oddly acting teacher.

She was about to leave the Restricted Section, when she finally remembered to ask about her award for doing the cube. 'Professor?' she turned toward the place he had last stood, 'you didn't answer my question. Since I solved the cube's mystery without help, what do I get out of it?'

From the shadows that now enveloped him, he felt like laughing at her temerity. 'What could possibly crown such an achievement?' he spoke softly but with a certain edge to his voice.

'Detention! Tomorrow! My office!. Be there at eight or you shall be very sorry to have shown such cheek in my presence.' he barked at her, making Hermione jump from fright. She hadn't expected him to shout inside the library.

She was about to answer him when Mme Pince arrived on the scene. 'For the love of Circe! Severus Snape, what has come over you? Why all this shouting inside the library?' She gave him her best sour look, the one she usually reserved for ill-behaving students.

"Do I really need to remind you of the rules around here?' she shook her index at him. 'Miss Granger!' she said as she suddenly realised that a student was present, 'what are doing here at this time? The library is closed now, off you go before I remove any points from gryffindor.'

She kindly pushed Hermione through the Restriction Section's doors and closed it shut behind her. Hermione's eyes grew wide as she heard Mme Pince giving Professor Snape an earful. Shaking her head in total disbelief, she left the library, still wondering what Snape had planned for her detention.


	2. Chapter 2

**The challenge – chapter two**

**Don't own it, never have and never will. Just having fun with the characters. This is an OC story. You have been warned. ;)**

At eight o'clock sharp, Hermione knocked on Professor Snape's door, her ears still ringing with Harry and Ron's rants from a few minutes ago. Both were livid about the unfairness of the situation. Hadn't Hermione helped the professor with the Rubik's cube?

Hermione had answered sheepishly that the professor had not asked for her help and that was probably why he had assigned detention to her. But regardless of the outcome, she had been too bossy for her own good, or so she had said to the boys. Harry almost had a fit, trying to make her see what a terrible git Snape was. Hermione had doggedly kept her opinion; she had it coming for being so nosey in the first place. Specially since she had been a bit sassy and sarcastic with the professor.

'Enter!' a voice bellowed from behind the door, jostling Hermione out of her thoughts as she pushed the door and entered with some measure of anxiety. She closed the door and primly went to stand before Snape's desk.

'I'm here for my deten...' she started to say.

'I very well know why you're here, Miss Granger!' he said waspishly, cutting her off without further ado. 'I'm not so senile or over-worked that I can't remember such things.'

Opening a drawer from the left-hand side of his desk, he retrieved 'the cube' from its depths. He then slammed it in front of him; glaring at it for a moment, before suddenly raising his dark glance to the girl's face. Hermione swallowed nervously as she stood there, having to endure his harsh visual evaluation.

'This _thing _is the source of our problems, for both of us. A certain Transfiguration professor, that shall remain un-named...' he hissed with disgust, 'had the lovely idea of issuing me a challenge.' Snape stood up and started to pace behind the desk.

'So you had to put the Rubik's cube in the right order to win.' Hermione said without being asked, earning herself another glare from Snape.

'Quite right, Miss know-it-all...' Snape answered nastily. 'And since then, I have been trying to...' he stopped in mid sentence, not wanting to appear like an imbecile in front of a student, specially a Gryffindor.

Hermione lowered her eyes, catching on quickly upon the professor's discomfiture. He felt idiotic for not succeeding in solving the problem. She knew that a boy's pride, or man's pride in this instance, was a very fragile thing and had to be protected at all cost. What could she do to help, without seemingly trying to? 

Hermione asked, 'well, I'm sorry I intervened, sir. I didn't mean to. I just thought I'd help out, since I had done the puzzle a number of times at home..." Snape interrupted again with an irritated swish of his hand.

'Silence! I don't want to know about your personal experiences with the device from Gryffindor hell.' He had stopped pacing and was now bent over his desk, glaring at her with annoyance. 'Last evening's little demonstration of your prowess was quite enough for me." he breathed angrily.

Hermione stepped a few paces away from the desk, trying to avoid the spittle that was jumping toward her as he spoke. With barely hidden disgust, she retorted 'I'm sorry, sir...truly, I am. I wasn't trying to show you up or anything.'

He groaned at her, 'of course you weren't. What Gryffindor could resist the chance of showing up the git of the dungeon's?' He answered back, an evil sneer marking his face. 'And one of Potter's friends too!'

A deep crimson flush rose up on Hermione's cheeks, her eyes dilating under her sudden feelings of anger. 'You know very well that Harry has nothing to do with this, and to infer that I did what I did because of that, is extremely unfair of you.' Her hands were clenched on either side of her; she was itching to get her wand and send a salvo of hexes. But this was Snape that was standing before her and he wouldn't be too keen to be the recipient of said hexes.

'Unfair?' he answered in a low, menacing tone. 'Fairness only exists in the minds of dunderheads and those of little mental capacity, Miss Granger!' He walked around his desk and came to stand behind her, like he had done the evening before.

Hermione stood ramrod straight, waiting for his next words. Because she knew he would add something to his last statement. She felt it in her bones.

He stood behind her, arms crossed over his chest, letting her stew in the uncertainty of the situation. He knew that she felt trapped and bewildered by his actions, like she had felt last night. Keeping the prey nervous was the best way of getting their guards down. Once that was achieved, he could swoop in and lay claim to the spoils.

Her breathing had become a bit shallower by now, her nerves alerted to potential danger. She couldn't see what this was amounting to. She cleared her voice, trying to break the silence that had befallen upon them. 

Snape smirked at her attempts to bring something about. So, to end her torture, he silently came nearer and whispered to her ear, 'since you are not of weak mind, I will let you deduce in which category you belong to... hmm?' As he spoke, a few small wisps of hair flew forward, gently tickling Hermione's neck and cheek. She shivered like she had the day before.

'Professor...' she started to say; only to be silenced by the strangest sound she had ever heard. Snape was laughing softly behind her back. She twisted around to face him, sending him a look of utter disbelief.

'Are you laughing at me?' she demanded crossly, taking her wand out of her pocket without even realising it.

'I, Miss Granger, am not laughing at you...' he shot back as he eyed the sudden appearance of her wand. 'But you, on the other hand, better not be thinking of using that wand upon a teacher of this school.'

'You were laughing at me and what I do with my wand is entirely my business... sir!' she hissed back in an instant. 'If this is your idea of playing games with me, you better have a very good reason behind it. I won't calmly let you play around with me as if I were a mouse... give me the detention I came here for and let's be done with it!'

As she hotly spoke up, she had aimed her wand near his face, defying him in the process. This would not do at all in Snape's perspective. He had seen what she could do with a wand during battle, and it wasn't pretty.

'Miss Granger, lower your wand this instant!' Snape said dryly, 'you are still a student of Hogwarts at the moment, but that could change forthwith if you do any harm to my person. Is that understood?'

Hermione lowered her wand just a fraction of an inch, 'I may be a student, but you as a teacher are not allowed to demean or threaten the students of this school.' she retaliated with a firm knowledge of the schools rules and dictates.

'How dare you quote school rules to me, you little...' he never got say whatever insult he was about to utter. Suddenly speechless from a certain spell from the Granger girl, his mouth was still moving but nothing was coming out.

Hermione took a step back, a hint of a smile on her lips. 'I'm sorry, professor Snape. I stopped you from saying something that would have most assuredly demeaned me.' With a shrug of her shoulders, she turned away and stepped toward the door. 'I'll let myself out since you haven't issued your latest detention for me. Owl me when you wish to arrange another date for this.'

But as she put her hand on the doorknob, she felt a hot, stinging sensation run through her fingers, making her let go of the knob. Spinning around to face Snape, she was suddenly grabbed by the collar and his face came forward, mere inches from hers.

His wand came up and he pointed it to his mouth, making her understand that she had to annul the spell she had thrown at him.

'Oh, very well... but I will protest to professor McGonagall. You had it coming.' she muttered under her breath, 'Finite Incantatem' she uttered with a strained voice.

Snape, on the other hand, was huffing with rage. 'You...' he started to say but changed his mind. 'Fine, you want your detention. Here it is, my little Gryffindor. You are to go up the Astronomy tower and clean off every bird dropping that you will find there. Without magic!'

Letting go of her collar, he went to his desk and retrieved a small brush. 'This is what you will use with a pail of plain water. No magical cleaning solutions, just plain cold water. Let's see how long it will take you to finish the job.'

Hermione just stared at the brush. It was quite small for the task that was being asked of her. Thinking about the last time she had gone up there, it would take many evenings to finish. The tower was almost totally covered by bird poo.

'And by the way, you will be asked to come to the Headmistress's office after supper. We will be talking about your conduct this evening.' Snape said with a leer. 'This should be quite interesting to see. How will you come up with a valid reason for attacking a professor of this school?' He asked with a mock show of concern.

'You will be expelled for this! But not before you get to do that precious detention you so wanted.' he purred on with delight.

Hermione knew she was in trouble for hexing him, but he was being deliberately being a bastard with her and she wasn't about to let him have his way that easily. All this trouble caused by a simple Rubik's cube? Merlin knows what the bet had been between him and McGonigall.

With that thought stowed away for future reference, she took the brush and pail he had in his hand and sharply turned away. It was rather useless to add anything now; it would only stoke his furnace even more.

As she reached the door, he said with hardly contained happiness, 'Happy tower cleaning, Miss Granger... don't go to bed too late, you have classes with me first thing tomorrow morning. And don't be late.' he added sharply with an evil glint in his eyes.

She huffed a breath at him and left the gloomy room without another word. He would pay for this, some way or another. Her emotions might have gotten away from her tonight, but he would soon regret his actions.


End file.
